As the economy has been in freefall, the idea that businesses might be encouraged to go out and spend sounds so, well, March 12.

As we contemplate a general economic hibernation this winter, it is also time for the government to pause, just for a moment, and consider how its policy prescriptions to date, or even the ones that we know are in contemplation, do not support that plan.

What the Treasurer meant when he was talking to Treasury was that we need to be able to virtually freeze-frame the economy and all the people in it, just as they are, with their businesses, their employee-employer relationships, business-banker relationships, landlord-tenant relationships all preserved to be unpacked again when the threat of coronavirus has passed.

If we can do that, and avoid people being sacked, businesses being foreclosed or evicted, tenants being evicted, the chances of a reasonably rapid recovery are that much better.

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We would not have to spend all the time involved in rebuilding those basic arrangements, and confidence. What does this mean in practice?

It means that people don’t have to pay as many as possible of the bills they normally have to pay, and can concentrate on surviving in circumstances where their businesses or households increasingly aren’t getting any income.

We are seeing more and more of this freeze-framing happening – with or without government intervention – with banks being prepared to suspend business and mortgage payments, insurance companies suspending premium payments, and governments indicating they will suspend rent and tax payments.

That is great, and also pragmatically rather sensible if people don’t actually have the money for these things anyway. As long as there is a huge government-provided net to support such a thing.

The Reserve Bank’s actions last week do support a lot of this, as do some of the decisions of the federal and state governments.

A dramatic change in two weeks

The government spoke then of “supporting business investment” and “providing cash-flow assistance to help small and medium-sized business to stay in business and keep their employees in jobs”.

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It may have been well-meaning, and went a lot further than people had expected, but as the economy has been in free fall, the idea that businesses might be encouraged to go out and invest, or even that small and medium-sized businesses would keep their doors open, sounds so, well, March 12.

While the government has announced massive new spending subsequently to support the economy, it has with the other hand been taking necessary steps, driven by public health concerns, to close the economy down, with the obvious ramifications for small and medium business.

So while a big increase in social welfare was announced last weekend, it has had both a positive effect of providing support, but also negative one of making it easier for businesses to feel they can "let people go", rather than trying to keep them on the books.

Similarly, the $715 million assistance package for the airlines – which have subsequently laid off close to 30,000 people – has been superseded.

As Virgin Australia chief executive Paul Scurrah said this week, the assistance would only be received, and only worked, if the airlines continued to operate.

Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs – or at least been "stood down" – in the last couple of weeks.

The government has foreshadowed even more assistance is on the way.

But before we see these new measures, we need a clear-eyed view of where the gaps are now in assistance already announced, and where the efficacy of that assistance has been diminished by the sheer scope of economic collapse.

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The first is in that area of keeping employers and employees together.

Britain announced wage subsidies in the past week. Our government remains steadfastly opposed to them, even though the most unlikely people are now advocating them.

Labor’s Jim Chalmers reports business leaders are universally saying this has got to happen. The government says it shouldn’t because it can more effectively deliver assistance through existing tax and social welfare systems.

However, the most alarming problem with that argument – in terms of ist actual effect – is that people aren’t going to actually get the assistance they need for at least a month – April 27.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said this week that “even using the existing system, the existing processes and programs, this is the amount of time it takes to get this additional level of support into the community”.

Let’s leave the damning indictment of how we have let our systems get to this point in a modern IT age for another day, and ask whether, if it is going to take a month anyway, surely there must be cause to at least look at alternatives?

Labor asks why the government couldn’t use the single touch payroll system – which commenced last year and gives real-time data on employees – to create a different base from which to pay wage subsidies.

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While we all mull that question, it is worth noting that while hundreds of thousands of people wait for assistance from the government, the UK wage subsidy is 80 per cent of previous wage, capped at £2500 ($5000) a month.

A more sustainable level of income

By comparison, our new JobSeeker payment will be 80 per cent of the minimum wage, if you assume current levels of rent assistance.

Surely, if we want to keep a pulse in the economy we need a sizeable part of the population to have a slightly more sustainable level of income.

There are still holes in the system too. The situation of households where one person has been laid off but not the other is one problem area. Tough withdrawal rates for levels of assistance as incomes rise really bite into the assistance households receive.

Equally, there are many visa holders in Australia whose situation is precarious, including hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, international students, and others without residency who are stuck here, as well as asylum-seekers.

More than 10,000 people poured into the nation's capital on the ninth day of protests over police brutality, but what awaited them was a city that no longer felt as if it was being occupied by its own country's military.